No health study set for Nassau toxic dump

A long-sought health study of residents near the toxic Dewey Loeffel dump in southern Rensselaer County is unnecessary and will not be done, according to a recent state and federal report that local officials and advocates criticize as a rehash of a similar report from a decade ago.

The Nov. 1 report by the state Health Department and the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, which reviewed a 2002 state report that found a decade’s worth of cancer rates around the dump were not elevated compared to the rest of the state, said there were “no new environmental data or public health findings that indicate further work is warranted at this time.”

That conclusion drew sharp disagreement from Rensselaer County Executive Kathy Jimino, Nassau Supervisor David Fleming and Kelly Travers-Main, founder of UNCAGED, a grassroots advocacy group formed 13 years ago to push for a dump cleanup and an accounting of potential health risks to people who live or lived nearby.

Located about four miles northeast of the village of Nassau, the 16-acre unlined dump contains about 46,000 pounds of PCBs, solvents and other toxic chemicals from General Electric Co., the former Schenectady International (now SI Group) and Bendix Corp. from 1952 to 1970, when the site was closed by court order.

A underground plume of tainted water from the dump extends about 2,500 feet south toward Central Nassau Road, and contains benzene and tricholoroethylene (TCE), a type of industrial solvent and a known carcinogen. PCB and other pollution has spread to nearby Valatie Kill, Nassau Lake and Kinderhook Lake in Columbia County. PCB-tainted fish from those bodies of water have been listed by the state as unsafe to eat since 1980.

“Given the types and amount of toxic wastes at this site, I believe the impacted community should receive the full health study they are seeking,” Jimino said. “The report done thus far appears to focus on what potential environmental exposure has occurred, deeming it limited and therefore concluding any health impacts as minimal as well. This is a very disappointing and dangerous stance.”

The report is just a “regurgitation” of the 2003 report by the Health Department and the federal agency, which also did not recommend a health study of residents, said Fleming, the Nassau supervisor. “I discredit everything that they put into it. They rely on data from the polluters or from the polluters’ consultants.”

Travers-Main agreed: “They took old data and updated for the November 2013 report, just to make it appear that they have done something comprehensive, when that did not happen.”

The latest state/federal report found that:

_ PCB levels in and around Nassau Lake are too low to be harmful to people.

_ Eating fish from the lake is not a risk as long as state consumption guidelines are followed.

_ Drinking and using water from nearby private wells, five of which have been found to be polluted, is not unsafe because of filtration systems on the tainted wells.

_ Based on groundwater samples taken in December 2010 from two nearby homes, no toxic vapors are leaking from underground within a half-mile of the dump to the south. No such conclusions can be made for land to the north, east and west of the dump.

A 2002 state study of cancer rates from 1989 to 1998 in three ZIP codes around the dump — 12123 (Nassau), 12063 (East Schodack) and 12062 (East Nassau) — found rates were “not elevated above the numbers of cancers that would have been expected” based on statewide rates, according to the report.

Brian Nearing

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